Operation:Burning Thorn
by Krikr
Summary: After months of covert operations, Strike-One is sent to EXALT's headquarters. Their mission: erase EXALT. T for violence, but that's X-Com.


**AN: I really love Annete, so here's something with her in it.**

 **edit: Corrected some typos.**

 **And seriously guys, I would really like some reviews, even if it's just to say "it was ok".**

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The only sound that could be heard in the skyranger was Central's voice, briefing them for their upcoming mission.  
"Strike-One, you're reaching EXALT's headquarters. Our intel shows they are located in the top floors of a skyscraper in San Francisco. The Skyranger will drop you on their helipad. Your objective is simple; kill every EXALT member you can find, search their leader and terminate him. Understood?'  
"Yes." answered the six soldiers.

Finally, the ramp of the Skyranger opened, revealing a double glassed door to a small hall. As the group exited it, Big Sky took off. Without hesitating Annette ran toward a pipe and climbed it, ending on the first roof level. She could see skylights on others parts of the roof but instead of going toward them, she kneeled and looked at the glass door under her. Meanwhile Tom King, their Assault, had headed toward the right side of the building, Faridah Malik, their medic, right next to him, Shaojie Zhang, their Heavy, had gone to the left of the building while Antonio Sanchez, the group's MEC, too heavy and big for thinking of hiding by taking cover, had retreated behind the ventilation and was actually doing a relatively good job at hiding. Lastly, Emily Lowe, their Sniper, had jumped next to her. Despite having seen them in action more than once, and even having being outfitted with some of them, the gene mods still impressed Annette.

A few seconds after everyone took their places, three EXALT agents exited the building and began inspecting the helipad.  
"Weird. They just left like that?" asked one of them  
"Maybe they didn't even land, and were just doing some recon." answered another.  
Silently, Annette signaled the others sans Sanchez to move forward. The both of them could handle three agents.  
Once she saw them moving, she began concentrating, fixing her target as purple energy surrounded her and reached toward him, becoming fainter and fainter until it was a barely noticeable purple smoke.  
And then she was in his head.  
"Wait! What's happening to..."  
The agent couldn't finish his question as Annette's puppet shot him in the face with his laser rifle.  
"Oh shi..."  
The second was shot to shreds by Sanchez's particle cannon.  
Grimacing at the headache what she was about to do would give her, Annette made her puppet drop his gun, take his sidearm, point it at his head and pull the trigger.

More shots were heard as her squadmates fired on EXALT troops, shortly followed by her squadmates reporting their kills.  
Quickly she moved toward Emily, whose head she saw toward the center of the roof and whose shots she could hear.  
A quick look in her direction reassured Emily that she was not about to be attacked by an agent. She resumed to look down.  
"How many?" asked Annette.  
"Three hostiles, one with a rocket launcher, one with a sniper and a medic."  
"Did you spot their boss ?"  
"No, but there's what seems an escape hatch next to the Big Bad Hologlobe."  
Curious at her collegue's words, Annette looked over the now smashed skylight's edge and saw that, as their uniform would suggest, EXALT was more worried about form than functuion.  
Big fur carpets, lavish woods and bookcases and the chair looked more fitting for Dr Claw than a paramilitary organization. The only thing missing was a white cat. And, as Emily had said, right next to their red Hologlobe was a steel trap door hiding, from what she could see, a staircase.  
Wich meant that EXALT's leader, the one responsible for her kidnapping and selling to the aliens, was escaping.  
She would _not_ let that happend.  
As the last EXALTs tried to resist, she vaulted over the edge and descended in the main room and ran toward the hatch. She climbed down the stairs, ignoring her allies' shouts to wait. She stepped on a long hallway, faintly seeing a few people running far from her.  
Dropping her rifle Annette ran even faster to catch up to EXALT's leaders, not giving a damn about the numerous room she passed.  
Hearing her footsteps, the six of seven men turned toward her and dropped into a firing position: three kneeled side by side while the three others simply stood beside each others, each of them pointing a laser rifle at her. Now that they faced her, Annette could see they wore suits that looked even more expensive than the group's elite soldiers and a somewhat heavier body armor. There was no doubt they were the organisation's chiefs.  
She shouldn't have dropped her plasma rifle. If she was lucky, her armor would absorb most of the attacks and she would be able to retaliate.  
But she didn't have just her plasma pistol, no, and she may have had a way of stopping them long enough for her to shoot.  
She continued running toward them, focusing on what she had felt when she had jumped out of that van on the dam. she focused, trying to project her power in more than a single place at a time.  
It worked. Sort of.

The six high ranking member of EXALT were not flown backward even for a single step. But two purple tendrils found their way to two of the men's head.  
She immediately made one turn toward the other end of the hall way. She _knew_ there had been a seventh one running away. Trough the man's eyes, she saw him. He wasn't dressed like a soldier, not even like one of his agents. And, if his clothing and the fact that the six had stayed to protect him indicated anything, he was their leader. The commander of EXALT.  
He would die.  
Her second puppet fired at his comrades, their close proximity making it impossible for him to miss them. Each shot's recoil impacting a body that was but wasn't her own disturbed her. Three of them were dead when he was turning toward the last of the sixth and took a laser between the eyes, ending his life instantly. Annette let out a sigh of relief, feeling an immense pressure lifted from her brain.  
Meanwhile the first puppet had shot at his former commander, keeping his finger on the trigger of his machine gun. Two of the numerous shots hitting EXALT's chief in the leg and forcing him to crawl away from her.  
As her puppet shot the last soldiers, she walked toward him, ended her mind control and shot him in the head with her pistol before he regained his senses.  
Her headache kept worsening and she felt that she was going to collapse soon but she kept walking toward the last man.  
Toward the man responsible for taking her away from her live, the man responsible for so many deaths.  
She kneeled beside him:  
"Remember me?"  
She shot him in the head.

Above her, the shots had stopped what felt like a long time ago, but it had been less than two minutes since she jumped into the main room. She walked toward her rifle feebly, bending over to pick it up. She saw Emily running toward her and helping her stand. After a quick look at the corpses in the hallway, she tapped her earpiece and said.  
"Central, Strike-One reporting in, Operation:Burning Thorn complete, no more hostile in the area. What do we do?"  
"Central in, take everything you can, hard drive, USBs, guns,... anything that can fit in the Skyranger. Burn the rest."  
"Consider it done. Strike-One out."  
The next twenty minutes were spent taking everything that could prove useful and setting a trail of oil in the building.  
As they boarded the Skyranger, Shaojie gave her a lighter.  
"Do you want to do it?"  
"Yes, please."  
She set fire to one of the numerous useless paper they had found, and dropped it on the trail of oil they had made, watching as the fire started to consume everything that was still standing.

* * *

 _Because i think the steel panel in the EXALT HQ hid an escape route and i wanted Annette to be the one to kill their chief._

 _Anyway, what do you think of it?_


End file.
